Debian Query Language. Berke Durak from the French National[7]Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control is[8]seeking feedback and ideas for defining a query language thatwould be useful to maintainers, power-users and researchers. They havealready developed a [9]dependency checker based on boolean form.Tools for handling the Debian meta data with its evolution in time arealso being implemented.

Date of last Modification. Kai Hendry [10]noted that policy's date[11]field is poorly implemented on /var/lib/dpkg/available. Relyinginstead on the changelog date for package activity can sometimes beincorrect as some developers may not update the date on their finalchange [12]accordingly. Joey Hess stepped in and [13]recommended theuse of dch -r to update the changelog timestamp when continuing workon packages.

Priorities of Alternatives. Wouter Verhelst [14]wondered why thepackage maintainers are allowed to chose the priority foralternatives. Naturally they are biased, as demonstrated with mceditbecoming the default for /usr/bin/editor. Using [15]popularity contestinstead would ensure that the applications which most people preferwould be the default.

Improving Debian's Publicity. Raphaël Hertzog [16]announced thecreation of the [17]debian-publicity mailing list. It aims at helpingthe press team by preparing and suggesting announcements and revivingthe [18]press clipping section of the project's website. It can alsobe a place to help Debian developers in drafting announcementsintended for the [19]debian-news mailing-list. This initiative is oneof the conclusions of the [20]Representing Debian meeting held at thisyear's Debian [21]conference. Assistance by non-technical people wouldbe greatly appreciated.

Tracking Critical Bugs. Andreas Barth [22]announced some enhancementsin his bts2ldap interface for [23]tracking critical issues in Debianpackages. The interface now takes into account the version of thepackage a bug appeared or was resolved in. Steinar H. Gunderson then[24]made many suggestions to improve tracking the resolution state ofbugs in the Debian [25]Bug Tracking System, for example by making theofficial release-critical bug [26]graph use the versioninginformation.

Separating shared Libraries and Executables. Goswin von Brederlow[27]noted that [28]policy demands that run-time support programs usinga shared library must not be put in the shared library package. Thiswould prevent the installation of more than one version of the sharedlibrary. Goswin [29]added that it would also complicate a conversionto [30]multiarch.

Debian in Cuba. David Moreno Garza [31]reported that he has beeninvited to go to Cuba to support some of Cuban Free Softwareinitiatives, which some of them are Debian-based. Walter Landry[32]explained that it used to be illegal under US law to export cryptoto any country, which has been relaxed though, but does not includeCuba. According to Walter, some types of communication are allowed,but some are not and even using the mailing list infrastructure may bea problem for Debian.

Automatic Loading of Kernel Modules. Jim Popovitch [33]noticed thatthe default installation of Debian loads many more kernel modules thanhe needs and wondered how to prevent this. Robert Sanchez[34]explained that the systems probably have some auto-detectionrunning which automatically load modules for the hardware they havediscovered.

Stopping Daemons upon Removal. Michael Prokop [35]wondered aboutmaintainer scripts that fail when they can't stop the daemon processthey try to. Henrique de Moraes Holschuh [36]added that stop targetsare to exit with a zero exit code 0 if the service is already stopped.Bert Schubert [37]explained that the proper solution for chrootenvironments is to add a policy-rc.d script and gave an example.

Private List Messages sent to Google Mail. Ian Jackson [38]noted thatthe current privacy and processing policies of Google Mail are notcompatible with Debian's policy for its private list. In his opinionGoogle should not get a copy of debian-private, even if the onlycurrent output is aggregate keyword hit reports.

TrueCrypt Licensing. Karl Goetz [39]wondered if the [40]license of thepopular multi-platform disc encryption software [41]TrueCrypt is freeenough to allow distributing it with Debian. Michael Poole[42]answered that the license isn't free at all because there are alot of unclear and unprecise paragraphs which makes it impossible todistribute TrueCrypt within Debian.

Orphaned Packages. 4 packages were orphaned this week and require anew maintainer. This makes a total of 311 orphaned packages. Manythanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the FreeSoftware community. Please see the [73]WNPP pages for the full list,and please add a note to the bug report and retitle it to ITA: if youplan to take over a package. To find out which orphaned packages areinstalled on your system the wnpp-alert program from devscripts may behelpful.

Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this newsletter.We still need more volunteer writers who watch the Debian communityand report about what is going on. Please see the [82]contributingpage to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving yourmail at [83]dwn@debian.org.